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Tue, 23 Jun 2015 12:58:48 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.4.13How to Overwinter Peppershttp://www.gardeningsuppliesreviewed.com/how-to-overwinter-peppers/
http://www.gardeningsuppliesreviewed.com/how-to-overwinter-peppers/#respondMon, 09 Mar 2015 23:25:47 +0000http://www.gardeningsuppliesreviewed.com/?p=423Right around the end of July, I found myself almost unconsciously heading over to the local garden center. (I guess sometimes your love of gardening can make you do crazy […]

]]>Right around the end of July, I found myself almost unconsciously heading over to the local garden center. (I guess sometimes your love of gardening can make you do crazy things.) To my delight, I saw that they still had a variety of pepper plants. Knowing that my boyfriend, a fanatic of pepper plants, would appreciate a new pepper plant or two, I picked up a small habanero and ghost pepper plant.

At the time of purchase, each of these plants had a couple peppers on them, as you can see from the pictures below.

Habanero Plant

Ghost Pepper

The plants did well for the last couple of weeks of the growing season. All of the original ghost peppers reached maturity and the habanero plant set out 2 mature habaneros. However, I found myself wishing that I could keep growing these little plants throughout the winter. Well, with a little bit of research, I found that I could!

As it turns out, pepper plants are perennial plants–meaning, they can live several years or even decades! However, most areas where people grow them are too cold for peppers to survive in the winter, so growers treat them like annuals and throw them away at the end of the season.

So, how do you keep your pepper plant from dying over the winter? Overwinter it!

Overwintering peppers

The first step to overwintering pepper plants is to take a hose and set it to a sharp stream and spray the entire plant down. This is necessary to knock pests, such as aphids, off the plants before you bring them inside. You should pick a day that isn’t too far near the end of the growing season to hose them so that you ensure the health of your pepper plant isn’t compromised by the cold weather.

After hosing down the plant, let it sit outside for a day or two to recoup from the hosing and then bring it inside.

The plant should be set near a sunny and well-insulated south-facing window. Try not to let your house get too cold. This means above 50 degrees Fahrenheit at night and above 65 during the day. Water your plant sparingly, but thoroughly. This means anywhere between once a week to once a month. I usually water my own plants once they start looking droopy and fertilize lightly once a month or less.

While overwintering your peppers, you might notice that flower are still blooming. If you’re willing, you can try hand-pollinating the flowers! This is extremely easy–all you have to do is take a Q-tip or paintbrush and swirl the tip inside a few flowers. The pollen will tran

Overwintering Habanero

sfer from flower to flower, and if you did a good job, you might get a pepper or two!

I did this and currently have 3 baby habaneros on my overwintered plant (2 months after bringing it in and 2.5 weeks after hand-pollination).

I also grew two more ghost peppers by hand-pollinating as well!

Other tips for overwintering peppers

Some peppers overwinter better than others. For instance, jalapeños are notoriously difficult to overwinter. I would know, as mine already died.

It’s a good idea to prune your pepper plant to make it more manageable indoors. This will also help it to promote growth later on and form sturdier stems.

If you’re thinking about overwintering a pepper plant, think about starting it in a container. This will help transition it to becoming a container plant for the winter.

Don’t worry if some leaves start drooping, browning, and falling off when you take the plant indoors. It may just be acclimating to its new environment (e.g., lack of sunlight/temperature changes).

With just a little bit of care, overwintering peppers can be a great and fun way to keep a little bit of your summer garden around!

]]>http://www.gardeningsuppliesreviewed.com/how-to-overwinter-peppers/feed/0How to Get Rid of Fungus Gnatshttp://www.gardeningsuppliesreviewed.com/how-to-get-rid-of-fungus-gnats/
http://www.gardeningsuppliesreviewed.com/how-to-get-rid-of-fungus-gnats/#respondMon, 02 Mar 2015 18:14:45 +0000http://www.gardeningsuppliesreviewed.com/?p=375Have you ever had fungus gnats? Do you want to know how to get rid of them? The following post will go over these two questions and give you expert […]

]]>Have you ever had fungus gnats? Do you want to know how to get rid of them? The following post will go over these two questions and give you expert advice on how to control your fungus gnat problem.

Why do I have fungus gnats?

There are a couple of reasons why you could have fungus gnats on your house plants. Here are the top two reasons that contribute to having fungus gnats.

Sterilizing your soil is pretty easy to do. You can go about it a couple of different ways, but the main logic behind sterilizing your soil is to get it heated up to 200 degrees Fahrenheit. You can do this in the microwave (my preferred method) or in the oven. Then you wait until it reaches room temperature/your desired temperature before potting your plants in it. Alternatively, you can pick up a bag of already sterilized soil from your garden center.

Why do I have to sterilize my soil?

Bringing the temperature up to 200 degrees Fahrenheit is necessary to kill off pathogens, as well as anything else that is living in the soil. You may not know it, but there are lots of living things that can come in your potting soil, and especially your compost.

2. Your potting soil has too much water in it.

Soil that is too wet all the time is just the kind of environment that fungus gnats love to breed in.

What can I do to get rid of these pests?

First things first. Stop watering your plant so much. Fungus gnats thrive in moist environments, so watering less frequently will help control your fungus gnat problem, and probably be healthier for your plant as well. How is it healthier? Well, most problems that people who have potted plants stem from overwatering. Does your plant look droopy even though you’ve given them lots of water? Are your seeds just falling over and dying randomly? If you’ve answered yes to either of these questions, you may be overwatering your plant. Overwatering your plant has been contested as possibly the worst and most prevalent reason for plant death, so many sure you are not overwatering.

Alright, you get it. So, what about those gnats? I’ve tried a lot of different ways to try and kill these bugs, including neem oil, dish washing detergent solution, and diatomaceous earth. Given all of this experimenting, I have come up with the top three ways to get rid of fungus gnats:

1. BTI

One of the most effective ways that I have found to get rid of these little bugs is with the use of BTI.

BTI is short for bacillus thuringiensis israelensis. BTI is bacteria, usually sold in stores in the form of pellets to help control mosquitoes, and is a natural larvicide. This means that BTI kills the larvae of insects such as fungus gnats and mosquitoes, which prevents them from maturing into adults. This product is a great example of a product with BTI in it, one that I recommend use to get rid of fungus gnats naturally. This is another great product that was created especially for use with gnats.

It takes about a week for BTI to kill off all of the larvae, but I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s the best control for these pests. Soaking my seedlings in neem oil and dishwashing detergent seems to kill the seedlings off instead of the fungus gnats, and diatomaceous earth is messy and looks gross on my plants.

Sometimes, however, BTI doesn’t do a very good job. So, what can you do?

2. Insecticidal soap

Insecticidal soap can be a good supplement to BTI. Because insecticidal soap only kills fungus gnats via contact, you’re going to want to use this in conjunction with BTI. A great brand of insecticidal soap is Garden Safe Insecticidal Soap, and you can find the product here. This brand of insecticidal soap is great for other insect problems that you may have, such as aphids or mites, and the best thing about it is that you can use it on vegetables and fruits without worrying about ingesting toxic chemicals.

3. Beneficial Nematodes

A final best practice for getting rid of those pesky fungus gnats is to combat them with an army of beneficial nematodes. Beneficial nematodes are little organisms that will kill of over 200 species of soil-borne pests that harm your plants. The best thing about beneficial nematodes is that while they kill harmful pests in your soil, they are perfectly safe for you and your plant. This is an excellent box of beneficial nematodes–it’s packed with over 10 million of them that are live and thriving!

]]>http://www.gardeningsuppliesreviewed.com/how-to-get-rid-of-fungus-gnats/feed/0Make Your Own Plantable Seed Cards!http://www.gardeningsuppliesreviewed.com/make-your-own-plantable-seed-cards/
http://www.gardeningsuppliesreviewed.com/make-your-own-plantable-seed-cards/#respondMon, 02 Mar 2015 16:45:21 +0000http://www.gardeningsuppliesreviewed.com/?p=350This Christmas, I decided to make my own presents. The two presents I made in advance were homemade vanilla extract and homemade vanilla sugar. The making of these two presents […]

]]>This Christmas, I decided to make my own presents. The two presents I made in advance were homemade vanilla extract and homemade vanilla sugar. The making of these two presents is incredibly easy–they’re basically “set it and forget it” recipes.

In addition to these gifts, I thought it would be a neat idea to make plantable seed cards to hang around the bottles.

Plantable seed cards are super easy to make. You can use most seeds for this project. In my project, I used a combination of marigold and zinnia seeds.

Here are the materials you’ll need for this project:

Shredded paper

A blender

Screen attached to a frame

Wax paper

Plastic tub

Water

Seeds

Baker’s roller

Cardboard

Here are the directions according to the way that I made it:

Step 1. Take your shredded paper and mix it with water.

Step 2. Put this water/shredded paper mixture into a blender and process until pureed.

Step 3. Position the screen over the tub and spread the paper pulp onto the screen into a thin layer.

Let drain until it stops dripping.

Step 4. Put wax paper over the screen and flip the paper over onto the wax paper.

Step 5. Get out your seeds. Feel free to use whatever you want–basil, poppy, wildflower–anything! For this card, I used a mix of zinnia and marigold seeds. Note: Make sure not to use seeds of any invasive species in your mix!

Step 6. Sprinkle seeds on the pulp.

Step 7. Fold the pulp over in half, put another layer of wax paper over the pulp so that there is wax paper on both sides of the paper, and use a baker’s roller to flatten the pulp out to about 1/4 inch thick.

Step 8. Put a towel on the paper and lay a piece of cardboard over it. Press as much water out as you can and then remove.

Step 9. Let dry for at least 24 hours.

Step 10. Cut and enjoy!

Note: Another way to get the seeds in the paper would be to mix it in the pulp, in a bowl after you’ve pureed the pulp. This is a great option when using smaller seeds or ones that seem less susceptible to breaking. However, I did not do it that way because I was afraid that the kind of seeds I was using would have a higher chance of breaking when rolling the paper out.

I hope you enjoyed this how-to post! Now go out there and make some seed cards, tiger!

]]>http://www.gardeningsuppliesreviewed.com/make-your-own-plantable-seed-cards/feed/0Growing Pineappleshttp://www.gardeningsuppliesreviewed.com/growing-pineapples/
http://www.gardeningsuppliesreviewed.com/growing-pineapples/#respondMon, 02 Mar 2015 16:41:25 +0000http://www.gardeningsuppliesreviewed.com/?p=347Hello everyone! We’ve got a fun little project that you can do right at home! This all started because I noticed pineapples were on sale at the supermarket. I had […]

We’ve got a fun little project that you can do right at home! This all started because I noticed pineapples were on sale at the supermarket. I had heard about people growing their own pineapples from the ones they had bought at their grocery store, so I decided to try it too!

Here’s what you do:

Get your pineapple and twist the top off.

After you twist the top off, peel off some of the bottom leaves. I peeled until I got most of the dead leaves off and then trimmed some excess with scissors.

In this picture, you’ll see where some of the roots are starting to come in!

Then, get a planter and fill it with potting soil.

Plant the bottom of the pineapple into the potting soil, but don’t cover too much of the stem. Just make sure that it sits in the planter and that it seems pretty sturdy.

Water, then sit it on a sunny windowsill.

In a few weeks time, your plant will have started growing a good root system. If you like, you can put some rooting hormone on the bottom of the stem before planting, however, pineapple stems usually take to the soil easily and thus don’t need rooting hormone.

As far as watering requirements go, make sure that your soil is always moist, but not wet. You don’t want to have the roots rot. You will probably want to water about once a week for this. Also, don’t be afraid to water right on the leaves–the leaves of the pineapple plant are especially designed to be tolerant of water and to funnel the water directly to the root system. As such, you don’t really have to worry about things like downy mildew.

With the right care, you can expect your pineapple to fruit in about 2 to 3 years. You can try and force it to fruit after one year by setting an apple on the pineapple and placing a bag over top of it for a night.

Whether you’re in a tropical zone or one with cold winters, this is an easy and fun activity that can be tremendously rewarding! I encourage you all to go out and try it too!